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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Music. No Bullshit.

One of the things that turns me off from a band the quickest
is when they babble ceaselessly about the ideas behind their music. There’s
nothing less rock and roll than a guy demanding to explain to you every emotion
that went into writing a song, or rattling off influences like the recipe to
some moody acoustic soup.

Buzz Osborne has no time for any of that bullshit.

The frontman, lead singer, songwriter, and guitar player of
the Melvins doesn’t spend his time retrospectively romanticizing his career, or
beating old hits to death on tour 20 years after their release. He has no
interest in being an icon or the voice of any generation. And that’s probably
why his music is regarded by many as some of the most influential to come out
of the late 1980s and early 90s, and why so many more commercially successful
bands cite the Melvins as a direct sonic influence.

The Melvins (comprised mainly of Osborne and drummer, Dale
Crover, with a rotating cast of bass players) have been releasing an album
every year or two since 1987. Few of their contemporaries can claim that kind
of consistently prolific output, and the reason is that, unlike many of the
other bands that were discovered in the Grunge explosion of the early 90s, the
music they were making always took a front seat to image or gimmicks.

“Influence can come from a wide variety of sources. It can
be noises in general, or a book you’re reading. You don’t know,” Osborne
explains. When it comes to the band’s writing process, the system is just as
straight-forward, “You just wade through a lot of garbage, and then something
happens. You kind of self-edit as you go along. But unless you put in the
footwork, nothing’s ever gonna happen. That’s always been the case.”

And he has no need for nostalgia. He recounts a small
basement show “many years ago in Albuquerque with Urge Overkill,” as being a
lot of fun, but when I ask if he misses those days, the answer is a flat “No.”
Osborne elaborates, “The difference is, now there’s people that care about our
music. Back then there wasn’t. That’s hard to deal with. We went for a long
time without anybody caring about us. I don’t wish to go back to that.”

Osborne’s curt, direct opinions are consistent in every
interview he’s ever given, and every article he’s ever written. He pulls no
punches and indulges no idol-worship. He’s simply a man who plays his guitar,
and chooses to allow that to speak for itself.

The message is entirely in the music, and that ideology
extends to picking their supporting act as well. The Melvins are currently
touring with LA-based Mexican firestorms Le Butcherettes, an angry, loud,
female-fronted punk band that also leaves everything out on the stage. As Buzz
recounts, “I saw them play live, and that was how it worked. I thought they
were really good, and really wanted to tour with them. They’re one of the
better new bands that I’ve seen.”

So if you get nostalgic when the radio or Pandora plays old
Nirvana, or Alice in Chains, or Primus, and you wonder why there aren’t any
bands around today that skewer their feelings with a wall of distortion and a
primal scream, realize that the Melvins are still around. They never changed.
They were just waiting for the rest of us to catch up and realize that the
thing we loved about all of that music before MTV made it “safe,” was that it
was made by people who played from their fucking hearts.